Джумпа Лахири - Whereabouts [calibre]

“Are you serious?”

He’ll never do it. He’s not the type, he’s too fearful. When we were together, all I did was listen to him. I would try to solve his problems, even tiny ones. Every time his back went out, every existential crisis. But by now I can look at him without absorbing a drop of that tiresome anxiety, that ongoing lament.

He was terrible at planning or remembering things. Distracted, the opposite of me. He never checked to see what was in the fridge, he’d buy the same stuff twice, we were always tossing food that had gone bad. He was almost always late, there was always some hitch, we were always rushing into the theater halfway through the movie. In the beginning it would irritate me but I got used to it. I adored him, I forgave him.

When we’d go on vacation together he would inevitably forget something essential: shoes for walking, a cream to protect his skin, the notebook for jotting things down. He’d forget to pack the heavy sweater, or the lightweight shirt. He was prone to getting fevers. I’ve seen several small cities alone while he recovered in a hotel room, while he slept pallid in the bed, coated with sweat under the covers. I made him broth when we got home, I prepared the hot-water bottle, I ran to the pharmacy. I didn’t mind playing nurse. Both his parents had died when he was young. You’re all I’ve got in this world, he’d say.

I was happy to cook at his place. I’d spend the entire morning doing the shopping, I’d crisscross the city for the meals I prepared for him. I remember absurd expeditions from one neighborhood to another searching for a particular cheese, for the shiniest eggplants. I’d arrive at his door, I’d set the table, he’d take his place and say: What would I do without your soup, without your roast chicken? Convinced that I was the center of his universe, I took it for granted that, sooner or later, he’d ask me to marry him.

Then one day in April someone rang my buzzer. I thought it was him. Instead it was another woman who knew my boyfriend just as well as I did, who saw him on the days I didn’t. I’d shared the same man with this woman for nearly five years. She lived in another neighborhood, and she’d come to know about me thanks to a book I’d lent him, the same book that he, idiotically, in turn, had lent to her. Unbelievable. Inside that book there was a piece of paper, the receipt from a doctor’s visit with my name and address. At which point all the little things that had puzzled her about their relationship made sense. She realized that she was only one of his lovers, and that we were an unwitting threesome.

“Did you tell him that you found that receipt? That you were coming to see me?” I asked her once I was able to speak. She was a short woman with bangs, caring eyes, a glow to her skin. She spoke calmly. She had a soothing voice.

“I didn’t tell him anything, I didn’t see the point. I just wanted to meet you.”

“Would you like a coffee?”

We sat down and started to chat. Pulling out our agendas, we reviewed, point by point, details of our parallel relationships: vacations and other memorable moments, herniated disks, bouts of the flu. It was a long and harrowing conversation. A meticulous exchange of information, of disparate dates that solved a mystery, that dispelled a nightmare I’d been unconsciously living. We realized that we were two survivors, and in the end we felt like partners in a crime. Each revelation was devastating. Everything she said. And yet, even as my life shattered in pieces, I felt as if I were finally coming up for air. The sun started to set and we were hungry, and when there was nothing left to say we went out to share a meal.

In My Head

Solitude: it’s become my trade. As it requires a certain discipline, it’s a condition I try to perfect. And yet it plagues me, it weighs on me in spite of my knowing it so well. It’s probably my mother’s influence. She’s always been afraid of being alone and now her life as an old woman torments her, so much that when I call to ask how she’s doing, she just says, I’m very alone. She says she misses having amusing and surprising experiences, this even though she has lots of friends who love her, and a social life far more complicated and lively than mine. The last time I went to visit her, for example, the phone kept ringing. And yet she’s always on edge, I’m not sure why. She’s burdened by the passage of time.

When I was young, even when my father was alive, she kept me close to her side, she never wanted us to be apart, not even briefly. She safeguarded me, she protected me from solitude as if it were a nightmare, or a wasp. We were an unhealthy amalgam until I left to lead a life of my own. Was I the shield between her and her terror, was I the one who kept her from sinking into the abyss? Was it the fear of her fear that’s led me to a life like this?

For years we’ve both been alone and I know that deep down she’d like to reconstruct that amalgam, thereby extinguishing our mutual solitude. In her opinion it would solve both our problems. But since I don’t give in, since I refuse to live in the same city, I prolong her suffering. If I tell my mother that I’m grateful to be on my own, to be in charge of my space and my time—this in spite of the silence, in spite of the lights I never switch off when I leave the house, along with the radio I always keep playing—she’d look at me, unconvinced. She’d say solitude was a lack and nothing more. There’s no point discussing it given that she’s blind to the small pleasures my solitude affords me. In spite of how she’s clung to me over the years my point of view doesn’t interest her, and this gulf between us has taught me what solitude really means.

At the Museum

Even though it’s right next to the train station, in the midst of perpetual crowds, my favorite museum is almost always empty. I like to stop by in the late afternoon, after work; I recognize the guards who spend all day on folding chairs, chatting among themselves in front of mosaics, friezes, frescoes, tiled floors.

The museum features a number of houses from antiquity. They were excavated, pried from their surroundings, removed, relocated, displayed to the public. They’ve reconstructed a few bedrooms, with walls painted red, or a dark hue of yellow, or black, or sky blue. Rooms in which, centuries ago, people slept, dreamt, were bored, made love.

The most beautiful room—it belonged to an emperor’s consort—has a garden painted onto the walls, teeming with trees, flowers, citrus plants, animals. Pomegranates have split open and birds perch on the branches of the trees. The scene is fixed, faded. The trees, with their thin branches, seem to bend as if from the soft breeze that courses through the landscape. This semblance of a breeze is what makes the painted nature tremble, rendering everything paradoxically alive.

In the middle of this room there are two soft benches covered in black leather. I sit down to observe the sun. It penetrates the glass roof and filters the light, causing the tonalities of the trees and shrubs in the fresco to change. The shifting light brightens and darkens the room in turns. It’s a panorama that makes me think of the sea, of swimming in a clear blue patch underwater.

Today an elegant woman about my age walks into the room. She looks like a foreigner. I bet she’s in the city by chance, maybe tagging along behind her husband, who’s here for work and busy all day. She has a resigned air, and she looks a bit put out. She’s obligated to be a tourist.

She knows nothing about this room and doesn’t seem particularly impressed. Maybe she’s thinking, as she sits in this stunning space, about how much she’s had to walk today, and how tired she is. Maybe she’s thinking of her house in some other part of the world. She’s already missing that ordinary dwelling. She’s seen her share of churches and fountains and by now she’s saturated. She’s got a tiny hotel room, it’s either too hot or too cold. She sleeps poorly due to jet lag.